Acehnese language

As of 1988, Acehnese is the modern English name spelling and the bibliographical standard, and Acehnese people use the spelling Acehnese when writing in English. Achinese is an antiquated spelling of the English language tradition. Atjehnese is the Dutch spelling and an outdated Indonesian one. The spelling Achehnese originates from a 1906 English translation of the Dutch-language Studien over atjesche klank- en schriftleer. Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 35.346-442 by Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje, 1892. In Acehnese the language is called Basa/Bahsa Acèh. In Indonesian it is called Bahasa Aceh.[3]

Acehnese belongs to the Malayo-Polynesian branch of Austronesian. Acehnese's closest relatives are the other Chamic languages, which are principally spoken in Vietnam and Cambodia. The distant relative of the Chamic family is the Malayic language family, which includes languages also spoken in Sumatra such as Minangkabau as well as the national language, Indonesian.

Paul Sidwell notes that Acehnese likely has an Austroasiatic substratum.[4]

Regencies in Aceh with Acehnese language majority

Acehnese language is spoken primarily in coastal region of Aceh. This language is spoken in thirteen regencies and four cities in Aceh, which are:

City

1. Sabang
2. Banda Aceh
3. Lhokseumawe
4. Langsa

North-East Coast

1. Aceh Besar
2. Pidie
3. Pidie Jaya
4. Bireuen
5. North Aceh
6. East Aceh (except in three districts, Serba Jadi, Peunaron and Simpang Jernih, where the Gayo language is spoken)
7. Aceh Tamiang (Mostly Manyak Payet and Kuala Simpang District; the rest of the Regency speaks a variety of the Malay language)

West-South Coast

1. Aceh Jaya
2. West Aceh
3. Nagan Raya
4. Southwest Aceh (except in Susoh District where the Aneuk Jamee language is spoken)
5. South Aceh (mixed with Kluet language and Aneuk Jamee)

Bilingual tsunami warning sign in Indonesian and Acehnese

Oral monophthong vowels in Acehnese are shown in the table below.[5]

In addition to the modern 26 letter basic Latin alphabet, Acehnese uses the supplementary letters è, é, ë, ô, and ö, making a total of 31 letters in its orthography.

Hikayat Prang Sabi

The table below shows the Acehnese consonant phonemes and the range of their realizations.[6]

Notes:

• Syllable-final orthographic ⟨k⟩ always represents /ʔ/ save in certain recent loans
• /z/, /f/, and /ʃ/ are borrowed sounds, and are often replaced by d and the clusters ph and ch, respectively
• The nasals /m/, /n/, /ɲ/, /ŋ/ are realized as post-stopped nasals (also called "funny nasals") before oral vowels and consonants.[7][8] They are distinct from the nasal-stop sequences /mb/, /nd/, /ɲɟ/, /ŋɡ/, e.g. in /banᵈa/ 'port' vs /mandum/ 'all'.[9]

Acehnese features a split ergative system. Intransitives that align with the agent of a transitive verb (Sa) always show agreement by a proclitic (1). Meanwhile, intransitives that align with the patient of a transitive verb (Sp) may optionally show agreement by an enclitic (2). Volitionality is the determining factor for whether an intransitive verb is Sa or Sp.[10]

Formerly, the Acehnese language was written in an Arabic script called Jawoë or Jawi in the Malay language. The script is less common nowadays. Since colonization by the Dutch, the Acehnese language has been written in the Latin script, with the addition of supplementary letters. The diacritical letters are é, è, ë, ö and ô.[11] The sound /ɨ/ is represented by ⟨eu⟩ and the sound /ʌ/ is represented by ⟨ö⟩, respectively. The letter 'ë' is used exclusively to represent the schwa sound which forms the second part of diphthongs. The letters f, q, v, x, and z are only used in loanwords.

Acehnese language is rich with literature. The oldest manuscript written in Acehnese is Hikayat Seumau'un from 1658 CE. Most Acehnese literatures consist of poetic works, very little written in prose form.[13]

At least ten Achehnese dialects exist: Pasè, Peusangan, Matang, Pidië, Buëng, Banda, Daya, Meulabôh, Seunagan, and Tunong.[14]

The following texts are excerpts from the official translations of article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Acehnese, along with the original declaration in English.

• Acehnese text sample:

Latin script[18]

"Bandum ureuëng lahé deungon meurdéhka, dan deungon martabat dan hak njang saban. Ngon akai geuseumiké, ngon haté geumeurasa, bandum geutanjoë lagèë sjèëdara. Hak dan keumuliaan."

• The original English version of the text:[19]

"All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood."

• 
  Hikayat Akhbarul Karim
• 
  Hikayat Banta Beuransah

• Al-Harbi, Awwad Ahmad Al-Ahmadi (2003), "Acehnese coda condition: An optimality-theoretic account" (PDF), Umm Al-Qura University Journal of Educational and Social Sciences and Humanities, 15 (1): 9–21
• Pillai, Stefanie; Yusuf, Yunisrina Qismullah (2012), "An instrumental analysis of acehnese oral vowels" (PDF), Language and Linguistics, 13 (6): 1029–1050, archived from the original (PDF) on 2017-10-11, retrieved 2014-10-31
• Asyik, Abdul Gani (1982), "The agreement system in Acehnese" (PDF), Mon–Khmer Studies, 11: 1–33, archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-02-20
• Durie, Mark (1985). A grammar of Acehnese: on the basis of a dialect of North Aceh. Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 112. Dordrecht: Foris Publications. ISBN 90-6765-074-9.
• Durie, Mark (1988a). "The So-Called Passive of Acehnese". Language. 64 (1): 104–113. doi:10.2307/414788. JSTOR 414788.
• Lawler, John M. (1977). "A Agrees with B in Achenese: A Problem for Relational Grammar". In Cole, P.; Sacock, J. (eds.). Grammatical Relations. Syntax and Semantics 8. New York: Academic Press. pp. 219–248. doi:10.1163/9789004368866_010.

• Asyik, Abdul Gani (1987). A Contextual Grammar of Acehnese Sentences (Complementation) (Thesis thesis). hdl:2027.42/161507.
• Daud, Bukhari (1997). Writing and reciting Acehnese: perspectives on language and literature in Aceh (PhD thesis). The University of Melbourne. hdl:11343/37197.
• Daud, Bukhari; Durie, Mark (1999). Kamus basa Acèh/Kamus bahasa Aceh/Acehnese-Indonesian-English thesaurus. Pacific Linguistics Series C, Volume 151. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. doi:10.15144/PL-C151. hdl:1885/146590. ISBN 0-85883-506-1.
• Durie, Mark (1984). A grammar of Acehnese (PhD thesis). Australian National University. doi:10.25911/5d6fa25bcc31c. hdl:1885/138059.
• Durie, Mark (1985a). "Control and decontrol in acehnese". Australian Journal of Linguistics. 5 (1): 43–53. doi:10.1080/07268608508599335.
• Durie, Mark (1987). "Grammatical Relations in Acehnese". Studies in Language. 11 (2): 365–399. doi:10.1075/sl.11.2.05dur.
• Durie, Mark (1988), Proto-Chamic and Acehnese mid vowels: towards Proto-Aceh-Chamic (PDF), archived (PDF) from the original on 2010-12-24
• Lawler, John M. (1988). "On the Questions of Acehnese 'Passive'" (PDF). Language. 64 (1): 114–117. doi:10.2307/414789. JSTOR 414789. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2014-07-03. Retrieved 2012-03-23.
• Legate, Julie Anne (2012). "Subjects in Acehnese and the Nature of the Passive" (PDF). Language. 88 (3): 495–525. doi:10.1353/lan.2012.0069. JSTOR 23251862. S2CID 7254201.
• Thurgood, Graham (2007), The Historical Place of Acehnese: The Known and the Unknown (PDF), archived from the original (PDF) on 2008-01-19
• "The Austroasiatic substratum of Acehnese | Linguistics". lx.berkeley.edu. Retrieved 2021-08-24.

Achinese edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

• Learning Acehnese in Indonesian
• BasaAceh.org
• Learning Acehnese in English and Indonesian Archived 2019-12-29 at the Wayback Machine
• Acehnese literature resources
• Acehnese at Omniglot
• Dryer, Matthew S.; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Acehnese language". World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
• The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Acehnese
• PARADISEC archive of Ache language includes three collections; MD4, MD5, and MD6. These collections focus on different varieties of Achenese.
• Listen to a sample of Achinese from Global Recordings Network